Among the contents so minutely examined are the goblin's holiday Almanack; a field guide to goblin types, with portraits and principal characteristics; and vast amounts of ill-assorted notes about goblins at play and, uh, play.

You even get pages which seam to have been mistakes in the printing process, like a couple of pages are upside down.

This volume tells the story a Victorian young lady who "presses" fairies between book pages, much as her compatriots pressed and collected flowers. Now, Silas must embark on a dangerous path into the Shadowlands to embrace his destiny and discover the truth about his father, no matter the cost. But he's about to learn that Amos was no mere mortician: he was the Undertaker of Lichport, charged with bringing The Peace to the dead trapped in the Shadowlands and Mist Homes, those states of limbo binding spirits to earth. As I walked through the woods and over the moor, I looked at the trees and the rocks and the hills and I could see the personality in those forms, metamorphosing into faeries, goblins, trolls, and other nature spirits. In traditional lore, one often finds that faeries have some striking defect of form: some are hollow-backed or elongated, others have goat- or lion-feet.

that infest our refrigerators, our pets, the spaces between our sofa cushions and in fact, our very lives. They were, it would seem, as old as time, and as terrifying to gaze upon as the mysteries with which they wrestled.

Lessons include translating and reading runes, skaldic speaking, calendar customs, and safely traversing the nine worlds while avoiding trolls, dragons, and giants! So I said to myself: What do I have to do to convince a publisher that there's an audience for this art?